


Fallout

by eluna



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Background Dean Winchester, Depressed Sam Winchester, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Emotionally Repressed Sam Winchester, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, M/M, POV Jessica Moore, Past Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Pre-Season/Series 01, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 09:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15288258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eluna/pseuds/eluna
Summary: The falling-out between Sam and his brother happens weeks after Jessica meets him. She doesn't know much, just that he's named Dean, older than her and Sam by a few years, and was pretty much Sam's role model growing up. They hadn't been seeing much of each other since Sam left for college, but still kept in touch sporadically, until Dean comes for this latest visit and suddenly Sam's knocking down Jessica's dorm room door with a blotchy face and snot in his hair, blubbering, "He's gone and he's not coming back, Jess, he's not coming back...!"





	Fallout

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking a lot lately about Sam and Stanford--the connections between his life and mine. This isn't much, but I wanted to write about my depression, and it got the job done for what I needed it to.

The falling-out between Sam and his brother happens weeks after Jessica meets him. She doesn't know much, just that he's named Dean, older than her and Sam by a few years, and was pretty much Sam's role model growing up. They hadn't been seeing much of each other since Sam left for college, but still kept in touch sporadically, until Dean comes for this latest visit and suddenly Sam's knocking down Jessica's dorm room door with a blotchy face and snot in his hair, blubbering, "He's gone and he's not coming back, Jess, he's not coming back...!"

She takes him into her arms and guides him into the room, sneaking the door shut with the ball of her foot; sits him down on the bed with a mug of tea and a box of Kleenex. The red in the whites of his eyes makes Sam's irises look blue--like turquoise shards of stained glass. It's beautiful-- _he's_ beautiful--but Jessica doesn't tell him so, shows him instead, with careful touches: a hug here, a pat there.

Sam falls asleep in her bed at half past three in the morning, having cried himself out and told her that he loves her more than he's ever loved anyone who wasn't family. It makes Jessica wonder just how isolated this beautiful, broken boy has been all his life. She's had a crush on Sam all month, but she wonders, too, for the first time, whether she's going to have to compete, not with her own insecurities, but with Sam's own fragile mind and longing for his brother.

The transformation is swift, abrupt, immediate. Sam walks through the motions--shows up to classes and his shitty job at Wendy's--but in his off hours, he sits numbly on Jessica's bed, staring at the wall, picking up novels just to fling them aside five minutes later. He says that nothing  _sticks_ , that he's just trying to find things to fill the hours before bed, but can't. When she kisses his cheek, tells him she wants to be the one to fill those hours, Sam smiles wryly and doesn't respond.

There's a day he finally opens up a little, tucked up next to Jessica in bed with his clothes off and his eyes open and earnest. "Dean was the best friend I will  _ever_ have," mutters Sam, this shell that Jessica has so come to love, and she tells herself to get comfortable with the thought that she will never measure up.


End file.
